“Because Condé Nast already has one strong-selling food magazine, Bon Appetit, it can afford to experiment with the Gourmet brand a little. What Conde Nast may discover is a new model for delivering the premium content of its magazines,” reports Mashable.

Gourmet Live is hiding some content from most users (so isn’t this a kind of paywall I can’t see?). And if I do things in a certain Gourmet-approved kind of way, I get to see that content.

This is wrong for two reasons. One, it hides content away, so all the paywall arguments apply here, but doubly so, because at least there’s a simple way to unlock paywalled content – by paying. Here, I have to jump through some hoops.

And there’s the second problem. It changes the relationship between publisher and reader. It makes the reader a kind of supplicant, willing to perform tasks to get treats. And, frankly, it’s just a magazine, you know? Who can be bothered?

“And, frankly, it’s just a magazine, you know? Who can be bothered?” Well, anyone who finds the additional content engaging and entertaining! Magazines have passionate fans, who will travel to live events, wear masthead-branded t-shirts and journey to specialist newsstands to get hold of titles. If iPad versions can pick up on the level of engagement that print magazines have achieved, they will have no problem in getting readers to “jump through some hoops”.